The Picture on the Box
by Michele McNally
Summary: Continuation of "Stockholm" and "Every Secret Thing." Having been set free by Sylar, Maggie finds herself jobless, homeless and utterly alone, comforted only by the unborn baby inside her womb, and the memory of the prison she wishes she could return to.
1. My Visitor

**Author's Note:** My story "Stockholm" had started as a one-shot written mostly to satisfy my frustration at how unbelievably sexy Sylar is (coupled with how clearly gay, and therefore unattainable Zachary Quinto is). Due to an overwhelming response from readers who insisted I continue, not only has there been a sequel entitled, "Every Secret Thing," but I decided to write a third installment.

And this time, it's multi-chapter. This story will take place after the events of "An Invisible Thread." As of right now, Season Four of Heroes has not yet begun, so I don't know what they're planning to do. Consider this an AU story.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed the previous stories. I hope you enjoy this one as well. Rest assured there will be fun sexy time later on, hence the M rating.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own "Heroes," or any of the characters in the following story except Maggie.

**The Picture on the Box**

by Michele McNally

A Heroes Fanfiction

Rated: M

For the most part, it was the same as most of the shelters I'd stayed at over the past few months. It had the same gray, graffiti-ridden walls, the same thin mattresses and scratchy blankets. The same watery soup. The same looks of pity when their eyes landed upon the bulge under my sweater. But for all the similarities, this latest building had one significant difference.

Roof access.

It didn't make much sense. This kind of place, filled with people at the end of their rope, who'd lost everything they ever had, you'd think they kept the door to the roof heavily guarded. But there it was at the top of the stairs, with no lock, just a sign that read "Authorized Personnel Only."

The black tar was littered with cigarette butts and empty whiskey bottles. I kicked them aside as I made my way to edge, one hand cradling the stomach in which my baby grew.

I wasn't going to jump. I just wanted to see. I wanted to look down onto the busy city and pretend that everything down there was as small as I felt. When I got to the edge and peered down at the traffic, my baby kicked. It wouldn't be long now. I was seven months pregnant, and five months unemployed.

When Sylar had let me go at a rest stop on the New York State Thruway, it had been the middle of the summer. I was 90 miles away from New York City, and the only money I had on me was the wad of bills stuffed in my purse. My tips from the night I'd been kidnapped.

When I got back to the city I went back to Mike's, but it was no longer Mike's. It had turned into some kind of vegan coffee shop where everything on the menu was "organic," and there was no one there who knew who I was. They said I wasn't the right "type" for that kind of place. Probably because I had been wearing my leather jacket when I walked in to fill out the application. Dead cow doesn't really mix well with the vegan crowd I guess.

I had nowhere to live. I only had one friend from Mike's who hadn't changed her number, and she let me stay on her couch for a few weeks. But after a few weeks her boyfriend started making comments about threesomes, which Heather didn't really seem too crazy about. Then one day I walked in on them having sex (on the kitchen table) and was almost immediately thrown out onto the street. Good riddance as far as I'm concerned. I ate on that table for God's sake.

I managed to find one restaurant that would hire me, but as soon as they found out I was pregnant, I was let go. They said that they didn't want to hire me only to have to deal with maternity leave so soon after. After that I began to show, and it was even harder to get a job. Nobody wanted to hire a pregnant girl. So I started moving from Women's Shelter to Women's Shelter, looking for work during the day, sleeping on thin, bed bug-ridden mattresses by night. As the weather got colder my tiny leather jacket no longer kept me from shivering, I would raid the clothing bins at churches.

And to make matters even worse, every once in a while I would sneeze, and something on the other side of the room would explode or go flying. Once I up-ended an entire vat of minestrone on line at the Soup Kitchen.

I was completely one hundred percent, balls to the wall horrified about what would happen once I gave birth to the baby.

As much as I'd hated my captivity, and wished for months that I could find a way to escape, I missed my Gabriel. I missed to security of my bomb shelter. There I knew that nothing would ever hurt me. I would have food, I would have clothing, I would be warm and if I got sick there would be someone there to take care of me. Part of me wondered if this baby was worth giving up that sanctuary.

He kicked.

Yes, he was worth it.

Behind me, someone cleared their throat. I jumped back from the edge, a protective hand on my stomach. I realize that this must look bad, standing on the edge of a tall building, looking down into the speeding traffic below. Someone had probably spotted me and sent a plain-clothes Police officer to talk me down from the ledge.

"I wasn't going to jump," I said quickly.

The young man behind me smiled. He was tall and lean with dark, wavy hair that fell into his eyes. "I know," he said. "I just… saw that you were alone. Thought you might need a friend."

He had that Goody Two-Shoes kind of look to him. Like he was about to set up a lemonade stand somewhere, raise money so that his senior class could sponsor an Ethiopian orphan. He was probably lying when he said he knew I wouldn't jump, and I fully believed that he would pull me down before I even had the chance.

I tried to give him a smile, but the best I could do was a little smirk that I'm sure looked like a grimace. I was out of practice smiling. "I'm fine."

He shook his head. "I… I'm sure that you're doing fine, but I know it must be hard for you right now."

Oh great. He was probably some kind of freaky Jesus-loving missionary who was bent on "saving me" for the sake of my soul and the soul of my unborn baby boy. "Listen," I said, eager to cut to the chase and let him know I wasn't interested in what he was selling, "I'm not the first unwed mother to come through here and I'm sure I won't be the last."

"I don't mean that," he said. "I mean because of your baby's ability."

Well that was unexpected.

"What?" I asked, perplexed. "How—" But I could tell from the way he was looking at me there was no denying it. He knew that my baby had abilities. All that remained was to figure out why he knew, and what he wanted. "How did you know that?"

"It's part of my ability," he answered. "I'm like him. Like your baby. Special."

That was the word that Gabriel had always used to describe himself. He had said he was "special." That they others like him were "special." Though I never said it to him, I always hated that classification. It made me feel inferior. They weren't "special," I would tell myself. Just different.

Because my only interaction with someone with abilities had resulted in my being kidnapped and held captive for over seven months, I was automatically suspicious.

"What do you want?"

He seemed to sense my dubiousness. He put up his hands. "I just want to help."

"Why?"

He shrugged. Then he gestured to a large metal structure to his right. It was some kind of air conditioning vent or something. I don't know. It was one of those big gray things you see on rooftops. But it was big enough to sit on, which he did, and he patted the hollow metal next to him. With mild trepidation, I sat down next to him.

"Now, I know that this will probably freak you out," he told me, speaking to me in a tone of voice that suggested he and I were old friends. "But I'm going to ask you to trust me. I just want you and the baby to be safe, and healthy."

"Oh God," I said. "My baby's not some kind of prophesized Chosen One or something, is he? Like, is he going to grow up to be some big leader of the Special People and rule over all the lesser beings? And you're here to keep some big evil government agency from killing me? Like Terminator?"

He blinked. "No."

"Oh. Okay. Just checking."

"No… I'm… I'm here on behalf of a group of people who have spent the last few years interacting with Gabriel Sylar."

The moment he said the name, the air came rushing out of my lungs like someone had punched me in the stomach. Until now, the thought had crossed my mind that I was the only one in the world who knew that Gabriel Sylar even existed. For all I knew, the only other human beings who'd ever been lucky enough to see his face had been killed shortly thereafter. I was the only survivor. But I was wrong. Here was someone who knew who Sylar was. Maybe he knew where I could find him, and how I would get back.

"What do you mean by 'interacting'?" I asked once my voice returned.

"Fighting him, chasing him, running from him and working side-by-side with him," he clarified. "You of all people should know, that Sylar is a very complicated person."

"You got that right."

"I found you because I wanted to put you in touch with them," said my mystery man. "There's not many people in the world who can understand what you're going through right now. But this guy—" He pressed a piece of paper into my hand. "He knows Sylar. And he's exactly the kind of guy who can help you."

"What about you?" I asked. "Why can't you help me?" There was something about this guy that made me feel like I was on familiar territory. The way he looked at me, his eyes were filled with tenderness. His voice had only compassion in it. I felt like I could curl up and go to sleep right here, my head on his lap, and nothing bad would ever happen to me ever again.

He looked like my Gabriel. His voice had the same deep velvety tone. He even smelled like my Gabriel.

"I can't stay," he said. "But you should find this guy. His name's Peter Petrelli. His address is on the paper." He looked up at the sky and squinted into the setting sun. "Look, I have to go. Just promise me that you'll take care of yourself, okay?"

He got up. I got up. I didn't want him to go. I missed Gabriel so much, and he reminded me of him so completely.

"Thank you!" I burst out, eager to make him turn back around and face me again. He did. "Please, what can I do to thank you?"

A sad smile crossed his lips. "You can name the baby after me."

"What's your name?"

"It's Derek," he said, and I let out a breathless laugh. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just… that was my father's name."

He smirked. "I know."

And he turned, and walked out the door, down the stairs and out of my life. My baby kicked. I put my hand over him to try to soothe his restlessness. Derek. I had already been planning on naming my baby after my late father.

And then it hit me. The name. The physical resemblance. The intimate knowledge of my plight, my kidnapping, my baby's father. All these miraculous things happening in front of my very eyes. People could move things with their minds, make sparks shoot out of their hands. Why hadn't it occurred to me right away that someone might be able to travel back in time?

Why hadn't I realized that I'd been talking to my own son?


	2. What I Can Do For You

The Picture on the Box

Two: What I Can Do For You

A sixth floor walk-up is a bitch when your ankles are swollen to twice their normal size. Hell, it would be a bitch even if I were at peak physical condition. Babies are supposed to be able to hear while they're still in the womb. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, Derek's first words were apt to be "Mother Fucker" from how many times I used it while making the trek up to Peter Petrelli's apartment.

Which is kind of messed up when you think about it.

But finally, wheezing and soaked with sweat, I arrived at his door. I'd chosen my longest sweater from the single backpack full of my worldly possessions. For some reason, I didn't want to appear overtly pregnant when I arrived at this stranger's door, asking for a handout. But while it protected me from the winter wind and the judgmental eyes of old women in Central Park, it also caused every bit of moisture left in my body to come oozing out my armpits.

I stopped to rest, and to catch my breath, but the longer I stood there, the more frightened I became. What if he wasn't home? What if he wasn't interested? How did Future Son know that he would help me?

Well, I guess he already did help me. That's why Future Son knew that he would.

But what if Derek's coming back to tell me that Peter would help me, and my going to find Peter made Peter _not_ want to help me? What if Peter had to decide to help me organically, on his own, and my finding him and _telling_ him to help me made him _not_ want to do it?

But maybe the reason Derek knew that Peter had helped me was because he had gone back in time to tell me to find Peter in the _first place_, and by going back in time, he was just doing what he had always done.

What the fuck was I talking about?

Just knock on the door, douche.

I knocked.

And as the pause lengthened between my knock and the door being opened, during which I heard quite a lot of shuffling and a muffled and sleepy "hold on," I remembered that it was nine in the morning. And Sunday. People who had homes were probably still asleep. Lucky them.

Finally, the door opened only wide enough to reach the end of a chain. On the other side was a handsome young man with dark eyes and dark hair. He was wearing a tank top and jeans that weren't even buttoned. Clearly he had just pulled them on when I knocked. I had woken him up. Way to get on a guy's good side, Mags.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"Peter Petrelli?" I asked. Please let this be the guy.

"Yeah?"

Uh oh. I had no idea what to say. Twenty minutes it took me to walk up the stairs and I hadn't thought of anything to say past "Peter Petrelli?" At a loss, I blurted out the first thing that came to my head.

"Yesterday a man from the future came to find me and told me that I had to find you because I'm pregnant with Sylar's baby and you were the only one in the world who could help me." He stared at me. "My name is Maggie, by the way."

The door closed. I contemplated how long it would take me to walk back down the stairs, but then I heard the sound of the chain being undone, and the door opened again, this time fully. He stepped back and let me in.

Ten minutes later, Peter and I were standing across from each other in his kitchen. He was pouring himself a cup of coffee. There was water boiling for my tea. He'd offered me a seat, but I hadn't taken it. It's not that I didn't want to sit after running the New York City Marathon to get here, I just didn't want to impose upon him any further.

I had just given him the Cliff's Notes version of my abduction and captivity by Sylar. I kept it strictly PG-13, and also left out all the stuff about my falling in love with the man who had kept me trapped like a mouse in a cage. I also kind of glossed over the fact that he had let me go. That would have been a little hard to explain. I just kind of trailed off and made it sound like I'd staged some kind of heroic, Steve McQueen-like escape. Peter didn't ask me to elaborate, thank goodness.

"So in all the time you've been free, he didn't once come looking for you?" he asked me.

"No."

"But he knew about the baby."

I nodded. "I think… I think that's why he hasn't come looking for me. I don't think he wants anything to do with him."

Peter scoffed, and took a sip of his coffee. "Well, you have nothing to worry about now."

Something in his tone made me look up. It was final. Absolute. No bones about it. It occurred to me that he'd been using only the past tense to refer to Sylar. "What do you mean?" I asked.

"Sylar's dead."

When I was fifteen I'd been filling the tires of my bike at a gas station and one of them exploded right next to my head. For the next ten seconds my ears rang so badly that I thought I'd gone deaf. When Peter Petrelli uttered those two simple words to me in the middle of his kitchen on a Sunday morning, the exact same thing happened to me.

I hadn't even realized I'd fallen until I'd hit the floor, because I didn't hear him call out my name in surprise, or his coffee cup hit the linoleum and shatter when he jerked forward suddenly to try and catch the pregnant woman hurtling to the ground. The world had simply gone away. Suddenly I had to remember the mechanics of breathing. Chest up, chest down. This was supposed to come naturally but I just couldn't make it happen. My entire body shut down.

Sylar was dead.

But what about Gabriel? My Gabriel? Sylar deserved to die. Sylar killed people. Sylar kidnapped me, held me hostage, made me forget what it was like to live a normal life, trapped me forever in his world of the supernatural by forcing me to care for a tiny baby who could move things with his mind. I would never be able to get away from these freaks because I now cared for one of them more than I regarded my own life. I hated Sylar for that.

But what about my Gabriel? The man whose eyes I wished my baby would have, and now knew he wouldn't. The man who'd read me stories and done the voices or each character. Who'd given me the greatest gift I could ever hope for, who was making me a mother, who tried to make me a wife in his own way. The man who let me go, because he knew that to keep me was wrong.

He didn't deserve the same fate as the serial killer that Peter Petrelli was so glad had died.

Eventually my hearing cleared. First I heard Peter's voice like I was underwater and he was above the surface. Then my name started to filter through and I looked up into his eyes. His face was blurry, and I realized that it was because tears were streaming down my face like someone had turned a faucet on.

"I'm okay," I tried to say, but my voice was strangled in a sob. Eventually the hysteria began to ebb, and my breathing calmed. When I had my voice back, I managed to say. "I'm sorry."

He didn't respond, but he held my wrist in his fingers and looked as his watch. Taking my pulse, I realized. No wonder Derek had sent me to this man. He must have had a medical background.

"I'm sorry," I said again. "It's just… my relationship with Gabriel is…was a little more complicated than I may have made it seem." He still didn't say anything. I wondered if he thought I was still hysterical. After all, I was implying that I was in love with a man who'd killed countless people. "I know it's crazy. He was a monster and he deserved…" I couldn't finish that sentence. "I just… he was my whole world for a very long time and I… I at least thought that I… I came to care for him very much."

"I understand," he said finally. "I'm sorry. I should have figured it would be big news for you."

"No, it's fine, really," I assured him. As if he'd stepped on my shoe in the Subway or something. "How did he die?" He didn't answer my question. He just helped me to a chair and began to mop up the coffee he'd spilled all over the floor. I pressed.

"Did you do it?"

That stopped him. "No. But I helped."

I nodded. It was a hard truth. I couldn't allow myself to hate him for it. If the situation had been different, I might have helped too. If I'd gotten out in those first few weeks, and Sylar had remained just the freak who had chloroformed me and dressed me up in flowery dresses, I might have handed Peter the knife. Sometimes I wished that he'd killed me before I'd had the chance to fall in love with him.

"It's okay," I said again. "It's okay. He was a monster."

He handed me my tea, and looked down at me as if to say that he knew I didn't believe what I was saying. I didn't, but that was okay too. I would believe it eventually. I just had to keep saying it to myself. I knew from past experiences that I could make myself believe any number of lies. I sipped the tea without blowing on it and it burned my tongue so badly that my entire mouth tasted like newspaper.

"It's good," I lied again. He poured himself a new cup of coffee and sat down next to me at the table. "So… are you a doctor?"

"No. I'm a nurse."

I raised an eyebrow. And then I laughed at him.

He smiled. "Yeah, I get that reaction a lot."

***

Peter's bed was soft and smelled like boy. It was a weird, indefinable smell. It wasn't aftershave. You never smelled it when you were in a full-grown man's bed. It was much more of a college dorm kind of smell, but not in a gross, I-need-to-go-home-so-Mom-can-do-my-laundry way. It was nice. He leant me a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants to sleep in that had the same smell, and I'd curled up in his still un-made bed the moment he'd offered it to me.

I didn't know why, but I'd been glad to see that there was no sign of a girl in this bed. No long hairs stuck to the pillow or compact in the nightstand drawer.

On this luxurious mattress, I fell asleep almost instantly. Even the baby was calm, ceasing his kicks the moment my sore back hit the bed. Made sense though, since it had been his idea to come here in the first place. I didn't know how long I slept, but when I woke up there were voices coming from Peter's living room, which was separated from the bedroom by two thin stained-glass doors.

I opened my eyes when the voices cut into my slumber, and I could see people moving around in the living room. The motions were agitated, like pacing. At one point one of the figures headed towards the door and another blurry form with Peter's voice jumped in front of it to keep it from leaving. I got up and moved towards the door, and the voices became clear to me.

"I don't see why this has to be our problem," said a woman.

"She needs help," Peter was saying. "I'm not about to just turn her out on the street."

"Angela," another male voice said in a placating tone. "Think of what we could learn from this woman. I've never heard of a baby exhibiting abilities from the womb."

"That's not why I called you," Peter said firmly, almost shouting. "You're not going to lock her away in one of your labs. She won't be an experiment."

That was when I opened the door. Peter looked up. The look on his face was an even mix of guilt at having woken me up, and embarrassment because he'd been caught talking about me. I looked at him for just a moment before my eyes found the other man in the room. The one who'd apparently been interested in turning me into a lab rat.

He looked like he'd been specifically designed to appear non-threatening. He was wearing a Honey-I'm-Home suit and horn-rimmed glasses. There was actually a briefcase on the floor next to his chair. I bet if I opened it, there would be a sandwich and a thermos of milk. When he saw me, he stood up and walked towards me.

"Hello, Maggie," he said, holding out his hand. "I'm Noah Bennet."

I did not take it. "Are you a doctor?"

"No."

"Are you a scientist?"

"No."

"Do you work for a government agency designed to monitor and control people with special abilities?"

He hesitated.

"Ha," I said, and then I sat down in his empty chair.

Peter smiled, then bit the inside of his cheek to keep it from showing. "Maggie, this is my mother, Angela Petrelli."

"Hi," I said coldly to the woman who'd just loudly insisted that she wanted nothing to do with me.

"Hello Maggie."

She sat. Noah Bennett sat. Peter sat. No one talked. They all looked at me. I felt like I was a patient in a mental institution and the three of them were visiting me. As if they might say something wrong and I would turn a table over and start shouting obscenities or something.

Finally, Peter turned to his mother. "Is Nathan coming?"

Angela looked uncomfortable. "No. I didn't think we should bother him with this."

"Don't you think this is something he should be aware of? After all, he'd the one who—"

Peter looked at me and abruptly cut off his train of thought. Ah. There it was. This Nathan must have been the one who killed Sylar. This realization stabbed itself directly between two of my ribs, and I closed my eyes, trying to take it in with grace, repeating my mantra again in my mind. He was a monster. He deserved what he got.

Noah Bennett took this awkward moment as an opportunity to lean forward in his chair and look at me in what I'm sure he thought was a friendly manner. "Maggie, Angela and I are the driving force behind a company that, as you said earlier, monitors and keeps people with abilities under control. But our goal isn't to put a collar around their necks. We make sure the bad ones, like Sylar, are stopped."

I cocked my head. So it seemed that this Nathan might not have been single-handed in the killing of my Gabriel.

"We also make sure that help gets to the ones who need it. With your baby's abilities, and your inability to control them, you can see how a normal hospital birth would be problematic."

He said it as if the thought hadn't already occurred to me. Really, Waldo? Like I hadn't been thinking about that the moment I realized I'd been knocked up with an X-Man?

"We have access to medical equipment and facilities that would provide a safe environment for you to have your baby."

Good on paper. Too good. I looked over at Peter. He was watching Noah in the same way that I was. Waiting for the catch. But Noah had stopped speaking. He wasn't the kind of person to present you with a "But…" up front. This made me trust him even less. I could tell there was fine print, but it looked like he wasn't going to let me read it until I'd already signed away my soul.

Ugh. I was getting so metaphorical.

"And then what?" I asked him. "You show me extraordinary kindness by letting me use your state-of-the-art medical equipment to have my special baby and what am I expected to give you in return? The baby?"

Noah leaned back in his chair. "Of course not, but you have to understand, your baby is very special. We've seen abilities in children as young as a few months. But never has a child been documented as displaying abilities before it was born."

My hands clamped down on my stomach. "I won't let you experiment on him."

Peter chimed in. "No one's going to make you do anything you don't want to do, Maggie."

"Good."

"But you have to understand," said Angela. "You can't have this baby in a hospital. With your lack of control, you'd be taking a very big risk. We've just begun cleaning up the mess Nathan made in exposing us all in the first place. We have to keep as far under the radar as we can."

I stood up. "Stop saying 'we' like I'm one of you! I'm not. I am a waitress. I was kidnapped. None of this was my choice. I am not special and I never will be. I don't give a damn about any of you! Not one of you! The only thing I care about right now is my baby. Giving birth to him somewhere other than the street!"

I was still wearing Peter's clothes, but I decided that was his problem, not mine. And from the fur collar around his mother's coat, I figured he could afford to buy another pair of sweats after I made off with the ones I was wearing. My shoes were in sight and so I pulled them on.

"Listen Peter, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I didn't come here to become anyone's science project. I just wanted a place to stay while I got on my feet, maybe some food that didn't come from a Soup Kitchen. But if this is what you had in mind, then forget it."

I grabbed my bag, but Peter stopped me before I could make it to the door. It didn't help that my enormous belly made moving swiftly extremely difficult.

"Woah, stop," he said, grabbing me by the arm. "Come on, Derek sent you to me. He wanted me to help you."

"Yeah, he wanted _you_ to help me. And if he wanted me to end up in the private lab of some weirdo company, he would have given me that address, not yours."

Peter stood firm in front of the door. "This is what I can do for you. I'm a hospice nurse, I can't deliver a baby by myself. I promise you, I swear that I will not let anything bad happen to you or to your baby. I'll stay with you every step of the way. I won't let anything hurt you."

God help me, he got to me. After all, I'd just gone from having everything in the world taken care of for me, to living on the streets. Right now the temptation to have someone take care of me again was very, very great. Just an hour and a half sleeping in a real bed again had almost made me ready to jump head-first into the back of Noah Bennett's Special People Abduction Van. Assuming he had one, of course. Which he probably did. They always had a van.

Maybe Derek sent me to Peter because he knew I was a sucker for tall, dark-haired men who wanted to take care of me. Maybe he sent me because he knew that Peter was telling the truth when he said he'd never let anything happen to me. Whatever the reason, I knew that as long as Peter was there, I was safe.

I sighed. "Alright. But on one condition."

"Anything you want," Peter agreed. Behind him, both Noah and Angela twitched, undoubtedly hoping that my condition was something that they could agree on as well.

"I want to meet Nathan," I said, and from the look on his face I knew that my inkling about the mysterious Nathan was correct. He was the one who had killed Sylar. "I want to look him in the eye."

"Alright," Peter agreed.

I looked back just in time to see Noah and Angela share a look, but I couldn't figure out what it meant.


	3. Contractions

**The Picture on the Box:**

Three: Contractions

I was over seven months pregnant when I had my first Ultra-Sound.

The specialist that "the Company" (that was what they called themselves—really? Couldn't think of anything else?) brought in to examine me nearly had a coronary when I told her that I hadn't been to a doctor yet during the course of my pregnancy. I tried not to be too sarcastic towards her. Hello? Living on the street?

Personally I didn't think it was such a big deal. Millions of babies were born before the Ultra-Sound machine was even invented. Trust me, because one of those babies grew up to invent the damn thing. But it seemed like everyone I met from the company was pre-conditioned to freak out at the drop of a hat. I think it was me. It was no secret that my baby was Sylar's. I think most of them expected me to give birth to the same monster, reincarnated.

I couldn't reassure them as to the fact that I'd met my son, and he'd seemed to me like a pretty nice guy. Peter and I decided to keep the whole time paradox thing under wraps for the sake of not complicating things.

True to his promise, Peter came with me to the exam. Together we walked into a paper factory down on the Hudson River, went through a door disguised as a solid wall, down an elevator and through another locked metal door. By the time we actually made it to the medical facility I was squeezing his hand pretty hard. As we made it through the hallway, Peter stopped for a moment.

"Hang on," he said. "I want to try something."

He turned to me and pointed his hand in my direction. I didn't know what he was doing at first, and then the necklace around my neck floated up in front of my face. He smiled and set it back down. He'd explained to me what his power was; that he could borrow the ability of anyone he touched. At the time I'd privately wondered if he could borrow Derek's ability by touching me. I guess he'd wondered as well.

The exam was pretty standard. Vaseline on the stomach, weird blobby shapes on a screen that were supposed to be my baby. After a lot of squinting I finally made out his head, and then his hands, and then there he was. A baby. Not just a thought in my head or a weird pressure on my ribcage or, more often, my bladder. An actual tiny person. I almost laughed when she asked if I wanted to know the sex, but I nodded and pretended to be surprised when she told me it was a boy.

Next to me, Peter looked as floored as I felt at seeing the baby. The moment I saw his eyes light up I could retreat into fantasy for a few seconds. In my fantasy Peter was the father of my totally normal, non-telekinetic baby boy. We were high school sweethearts and madly in love. We had a house. Maybe a boat. Definitely some kind of dog. We were not in a scary basement lab where we could disappear and no one would ever find our bodies.

Peter made sure that I dealt with Noah Bennett as little as possible. I didn't like him. He made me very nervous. I never wanted to touch him. I had this nightmare that he would shake my hand, and his fingers would close around mine so tightly that I couldn't pull my hand away. Then, before Peter could get to me from across the room, Noah Bennett's other hand would jab a needle into my neck and I would fall asleep. I'd wake up days or weeks or maybe months later and my baby would be gone. I'd run around the company hallways trying to find him, or Peter or anyone who would help me, but no one would know who I was.

Whenever I had this dream, I would wake up screaming. Peter would run in from the living room (he was sleeping on his own couch and letting me have the bed) and hold me while I cried. When he asked me what I had dreamt about, I would tell him it was Sylar. I couldn't bring myself to tell him how much being at the Company scared me.

A month went by, and I still hadn't met Nathan. I'd agreed to all the examinations, all the tests, I'd fulfilled my end of the bargain. But I still hadn't gotten to see the man who had killed Gabriel. Peter seemed as frustrated with this fact as I was, but it was really Angela who was the obstacle. She always seemed to be the one to deliver the news that Nathan was indisposed. She was even keeping Peter from him, I noticed.

I knew by now that Nathan was Peter's brother, which was why he wasn't trying too hard to get me to see him. I imagine he and Angela were both afraid that I would try to take some kind of revenge on Nathan. After all, I'd already established that I was unstable, having fallen in love with the man who kidnapped me. I'm sure they both thought Nathan was in danger from me. Angela believed it more than Peter, I was sure. But still, Peter wasn't going to too many lengths to get me what I wanted.

That all changed when I met Claire.

Like with Nathan, I think Angela Petrelli deliberately kept Claire away from me as long as possible. Because Claire was a badass mother who don't take no crap off of nobody. Angela would have known that the second I told Claire Bennett that Nathan Petrelli was being kept away from me, she would find away to get me to him.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

One morning I was home alone in Peter's house while he was at work. I was always nervous when this happened, but he called me every chance he got to check that I was alright. In a way it reminded me of when Gabriel would leave me, and I would keep myself busy, anxiously awaiting his return. Except that Peter had cable.

So naturally, when there was a knock on this door hours before Peter was due back home, I assumed that The Company had come for me. The van was probably parked outside at this very moment. I raced to the door and looked out the peephole, but there was only a very non-threatening blonde girl on the other side. But her white-bread appearance didn't fool me, I was sure there were at least a dozen agents waiting in the hallway, ready to tranquilize me as soon as I opened the door. I didn't even open it with the chain on it. I just called through the door, demanding to know who she was. When she explained that she was Claire Bennett, Peter's niece, I had to call Peter on his cell phone before I let her in.

But I did.

"Hey," she said when she came into the apartment.

"Hi."

"You're Maggie, right? My dad told me about you."

"Your dad?"

"Well, not my real dad…"

And so began my introduction into the Soap Opera that is the Petrellis and the Bennetts. Apparently Claire's adoptive father was the man with the horn-rimmed glasses who wanted to keep me locked up with sensors attached to my temples, but her biological father was the man who had killed the father of my baby. Also she was the only person to have ever been attacked by Sylar and survived.

"I've been meaning to come and see you sooner, but my dad's been coming up with lots of ways to keep me from coming out here," she said.

"Yeah, there's a lot of that going around."

"What do you mean?"

I shook my head. "Your dad. And your grandmother. They're keeping me from meeting Nathan."

"Why do you want to meet Nathan?" she asked in that same suspicious tone.

"Oh, come on!" I was getting frustrated. "Not to stab him to death, okay? Listen, I was kidnapped and held captive by a psychotic serial killer who convinced me that I was in love with him—" It still sounded like a lie to me, but it was becoming easier to phrase it that way. "Now he'd dead and gone—" My voice broke only slightly. "And I just want to meet the man who did it, okay? Just so I know he exists! Just so I can look him in the eyes and just…acknowledge that he killed the father of my son!"

Claire blinked in surprise at my outburst. Who could blame her? After all, I'd known her for a total of fifteen minutes.

"I'm sorry, that wasn't directed at you. I'm just getting very frustrated."

"I know how you feel. My dad likes to be in control."

"Which one?"

"Both."

I laughed. She laughed. The tension broke. We decided to order Chinese. Then "Miss Congeniality" came on TBS and by the time Sandra Bullock punched Miss Texas in the face, we were best friends. It felt so good to have a girl around. Claire was a few years younger than me, but she was far more mature than I was when I was her age. I guess she had to grow up fast. We sat there picking apart the several fortune cookies they'd included with our food, and for the first time, I talked about Sylar.

I hadn't brought it up. Claire did.

"I've never said anything to Peter, or my dad," she said, "but there were times when I felt sorry for him. I mean, I hated him. He hurt me so badly, and for a while all I wanted was to see him dead."

I winced.

"But then…afterwards, when I was watching his body burn, I couldn't help but think about what happened to him to make him like that. Most of the time he was a psychotic killer, but every once in a while he would say something that showed a little glimpse of a normal person buried deep inside."

I nodded. "There were parts of him that were good. He could be really sweet if he wanted to. It was like he had two personalities."

"You know, I understand why you want to meet Nathan. But you should know that Sylar is dead because of all of us. Even me. We all fought him that night, Nathan is just the one who finished it."

"Then why is Angela trying so hard to keep him away from me?"

I threw away the fortune in my hand and bit into my cookie when a sharp pain exploded in my stomach. I cried out, and Claire asked me what was wrong.

"Um…I don't know. Either I just had the mother of all stomach cramps, or I'm having the baby."

I'd meant it as a joke, but then my water broke. All over Peter's couch. As if he hadn't already been through enough, taking me in, giving up his bed. Now I'd spewed amniotic fluid all over the only place he had left to sleep. This was the thought going through my head while Claire hyperventilated and tried to figure out what to do.

My solution was simple: Call Peter. Her solution was a little bit more complicated. She called Peter, Angela, and her father.

Both of them.

Peter was at the apartment so fast that I suspect he'd found a super-fast person to hug on his way over. He threw us in the car and drove to the non-descript paper factory so fast that I was sure we were going to get pulled over. At least if we had, that old "My wife's in labor" excuse might actually work. But no one pulled us over and we made it to the Company before my contractions were even four minutes apart.

So I don't know if anyone ever told you this, but having a baby hurts like hell.

Claire and Peter held both my hands. "Do you want something for the pain?" Claire asked me.

"No!" I said through clenched teeth, my eyes squeezed shut.

"Maggie, are you sure? Let them give you something," Peter said.

"No! Please!" My tone turned desperate. If they gave me drugs, they could put me to sleep. If I went to sleep they could take him away from me. What if that's why Derek came looking for me? Maybe where he was from, he never knew me. Maybe they took him away from me and did experiments on him. Maybe he told me to find Peter because he wanted someone to stop them from taking him. But who was to say that Peter would be able to stop them?

Peter, like he always did, seemed to know what I was thinking. He leaned over me, and took my face in both of his hands. "Maggie, listen to me. I am here. Nothing is going to happen to you. I swear to you. You and Derek, you're both going to be fine. I promise."

"I promise, too," said Claire. I believed her. In the short hours that I had known Claire, I'd come to learn that she had a rebellious streak the size of the Panama Canal. It didn't matter if my baby was born with horns and a pointy tail, she'd probably protect him with her life just to piss her dad off.

Another contraction seized my body and I nodded furiously. "Okay!" I burst when the pain had passed. "Give me drugs! Drugs now please! Drugs, drugs, drugs."

The nurse injected something into my IV and the pain began to melt away. But I could still feel everything happening. I could feel him, moving and shifting inside of me, trying to find his way out. People were bustling around me, moving things, prepping and getting ready. The nurse was coaching me, telling me to breathe, to push, whatever the hell they say to you while you're trying to squeeze a human being out your hoo-hah.

All I could think about was Gabriel. He should be here. He should be the one holding my hand, not Peter Petrelli and some blonde cheerleader I just met. These people didn't care about me, they just wanted to see if the boy I gave birth to was going to follow in his father's footsteps. Once Derek was born, I no longer mattered. I would go back to my normal existence, with no special abilities or talents. I would fade into the background. Derek would become part of their little club. Off he would go to fight crime or something while I sat at home knitting.

Another contraction hit me, and though it didn't hurt, my body seized up with tension. Next to me, the machine monitoring the heart rate of the baby exploded. The screen burst out and sparks flew. Black smoke curled up toward the ceiling. The instruments they had lined up to cut the umbilical cord went flying across the room.

The doctor tried to keep his cool, but I could tell from his eyes that he was freaked out.

"The baby's crowning," he said, and I could feel my Derek pushing his way out of me. "Keep pushing," the doctor said, but it wasn't me. Derek was doing it himself. He wanted to be born. He wanted to find his way back to me.

Things were still flying all over the room. Peter, his hand still clamped around mine, borrowed my baby's power and used his telekinesis to stop the things flying around. They halted in mid-air, pulled in two directions, but there was a new noise coming from just outside the room.

Shouting, banging. Though my attention was focused elsewhere, I started to panic. Was this the boogey-men finally coming to take my baby away? Was someone trying to fight them off? Through the haze I heard a clear voice, full of authority.

"Why wasn't I told about this?" the shout came. "Get out of my way!"

"One more big push," said the doctor.

I pushed with all my might, and just then the door to the delivery room opened. In burst Noah Bennett, Angela Petrelli, and a man whose face I had never seen before, but strangely he was familiar to me.

As my new baby's cries filled the room, the unfamiliar yet familiar man looked at me and froze where he stood, his eyes locked on mine. For a moment I thought that it was my Gabriel, come back from the dead, there to see his son being born. But then I saw the protective way Angela Petrelli stood just behind his shoulder and I knew.

This man must be Nathan Petrelli.


	4. The Only Thing That Was Mine

The Picture on the Box Four: The Only Thing That Was Mine

Peter looked down at the baby in my arms.

"He's beautiful," he said, and he was so right. Derek had teeny, tiny hands and chubby cheeks. I searched his little face for a resemblance to me or to my Gabriel, but to tell the truth, I thought he just looked like a baby. A perfect little baby. I knew that later he would inherit is father's cat-like physique, and my mother's blue eyes would stare out of his tiny face when he opened his eyes. But for now he was curled up against my chest with his fingers in his mouth.

Peter reached out and stroked the back of Derek's little hand with his finger. I smiled up at him and he grinned back down at me like he was the proud father. Finally I was completely confident that Peter would always take care of Derek, even if his investment in me started to wane. Derek curled his tiny fist around Peter's ring finger and I could tell he was hooked.

"Do you want to hold him?" I asked.

Peter lit up and held out his arms. He knew exactly how to cradle him, supporting his head and all that important stuff. He had none of the awkwardness that most young men have when holding babies. His natural state was to nurture. After all, he'd been a hospice nurse. He was well versed in caring for frail human beings. Derek stirred in his arms and he hummed a lullaby under his breath. I leaned back onto my pillows and my head drooped.

"Tired?" he asked me.

I nodded. "Big day."

"Why don't you sleep? I'll stay here and watch you."

I didn't want to sleep yet. "But he just got here," I whined. "I don't want to miss anything."

Peter chuckled and laid Derek onto his bassinet so gently it was as if he were laying him on the surface of a still pond. Then he leaned down and kissed my forehead.

"Go to sleep Maggie," he said. "I'll wake you up if he starts walking already."

***

Needless to say, I was shocked when I woke up and neither Peter nor my baby were there. I jerked up, but a soft voice stopped me before I could pull the blanket from the bed and race out of the room.

"It's okay."

Next to my bed sat Nathan Petrelli. He was rigid and businesslike. His suit was perfectly ironed. It was blue, and his tie was red, which gave him an All-American bipartisan look that hurt my eyes.

"The nurses needed to examine the baby," he explained in a clear, emotionless voice. "Take his vitals, measure him, all very standard stuff. Peter went with them to make sure there were no extraneous tests without your permission. He wanted to wake you, but I told him I'd watch you."

Okay. My baby was alright. Peter was with him. My initial fear retreated, leaving me alone in the room with the man who'd killed Gabriel Sylar. He looked extremely uncomfortable to be in the same room with me.

"I just want you to know," he continued in the same detached tone. "Before Claire called me yesterday I had no idea you existed. It seemed that my mother has been keeping your situation a secret from me."

I almost laughed. My situation. I was being kept hidden away like some black sheep of the family. It made sense. Angela Petrelli was raised in a time when an unwed mother would be shipped off to France to have her baby and give it up for adoption before returning with some fake story about studying at an Art Institute for a year.

"I spoke to Peter, and to Claire, and they told me everything. I can't imagine what the last year and a half has been like for you. You're truly a strong young woman for having endured it all."

He sounded so political, I half expected to receive a pat on the back and a medal of honor when Peter walked in. A nurse was close behind him with Derek, and when Nathan saw the baby, his eyes softened just enough to make him look like a human rather than a talking suit.

I had my arms out before the nurse had even left the room, and as soon as Derek was in my arms again I drew the blanket up around both of us and sighed like a missing part of my body had been restored. But I guess in a way, that's exactly what he was to me. He'd been part of my body for nine months. Every time he was away from me was probably going to feel like I'd suddenly lost a leg. I now forgive my mother for calling so much when I went away to sleep-away camp.

"He's perfectly healthy," Peter reported. "Seven pounds, eight ounces. Ten fingers, ten toes, telekinesis, and they think he might have some kind of telepathic powers too."

"How do they know that?" I asked warily. They weren't supposed to do any kind of tests on him to determine his abilities. I'd made myself clear.

"They don't know for sure," Peter assured me. "But some of the nurses said that he was making them feel happier. They think he can do something to people's emotions."

Well that explained why I was always so happy when he was around. Other than the fact that he was my one and only child and I loved him more than life itself. But it explained why everyone else seemed to love him too. Even Noah Bennett had seemed touched when he'd first seen the baby.

"Just a perfectly healthy, bouncing baby boy," I quipped.

"He's beautiful," Nathan said. "I have two boys myself."

My ears perked up. The statement had a tone to it that seemed familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place it. After a moment I realized why it had struck a chord with me. The way he'd said it, Nathan had sounded just like Sylar had in those moments in which he knew he was _supposed_ to say something. Like "thank you," or "I love you." It sounded stiff, almost as if it were rehearsed. It was the proper response for the proud father of two.

In that moment, I gained a little sympathy for the man in front of me. It seemed that like my Gabriel, Nathan Petrelli was trying to live up to an image that didn't quite fit.

I turned back to my baby, determined to forget about Sylar, though I seemed to be constantly reminded of him at every turn. Derek was the only man in my life that mattered now.

"Well," I said to him. "Here you are."

Peter leaned down over Derek. "Seems like an awful lot of trouble for such a little guy," he joked.

I looked up at Peter. "I don't know how I'll ever thank you for everything you've done for me. I promise as soon as I can I'll get out of you hair."

I was expecting a certain level of protestation from Peter. I was sure he would insist that having me was no trouble and I was welcome to stay as long as I needed until I could support myself. I was actually counting on it, since I still had no job, no money and now had a tiny baby to support. But I did hate he thought of being a burden to this wonderfully generous man, and I did want nothing more than to be self-sufficient again. But as Peter opened his mouth to respond, Nathan cut in.

"Don't be ridiculous, Maggie," he said. "I've already found you your own apartment in the city. I'm making arrangements for a nursemaid and a private physician as well. It will take some time to find ones with the proper amount of discretion of course. It's all free of charge for as long as you need it."

Peter looked just as shocked as I was. It was one thing to stay on Peter's couch and do dishes and vacuum in exchange for the groceries he bought me, but taking a New York City apartment and round-the-clock servants when I had no way in sight to pay Nathan back was another thing altogether.

"That's… that's very generous Nathan," I stammered, "but I couldn't—"

Nathan waved his hand, final. "I insist."

"Why?"

He sighed, and for a moment his cold, put-together guy façade seemed to slip. He looked down at Derek, and then at my face.

"You're what? Twenty-two? Sylar took your life away from you, changed you forever and then left you alone to pick up the pieces. He promised that he would take care of you and then abandoned you. And even if there was some tiny bit left inside him that was still human, that maybe might have come back to find you and try to make it right… well there's no chance of that happening now."

I looked away. I couldn't look at his face while he was saying these words. Or Peter, who I'm sure could tell from my face the truth that they reflected in me. Despite everything Sylar had done to me, and despite how relieved I'd been to gain back my freedom after so many months of captivity, I had always hoped that he would come back for me. He would take care of me again. And now he was dead and it was never going to happen.

"It can never be made right," Nathan continued. "And that is because of us. Me, Peter, our mother, Bennett, even Claire. We all had a hand in killing him, and as far as I'm concerned, that makes us responsible for you."

He stood up and walked over to the wall. I'm sure he wished there were a window there that he could stare out of as he made his dramatic speech, but as we were about a hundred feet under ground, he was out of luck.

"Sylar is dead. But that doesn't erase all the horrible things he did. If there's a chance to pick up some of the pieces, to try and fix something that he destroyed, then we have to take that chance. From now on Maggie, we'll take care of you."

I knew he was a Congressman. I knew that inspirational speeches were his M.O., but when he turned to me and I finally looked up into his eyes, I couldn't deny the conviction I saw there. I couldn't help but believe him. And after all I'd been through the past nine months, I wanted nothing more than to curl up into a warm ball of blankets and pillows with my new baby boy and have somebody else take care of everything in the world that was difficult or dangerous. The offer was too tempting to resist.

I didn't trust myself not to break down into tears, so I nodded.

Peter actually looked a little uncomfortable. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he looked jealous. "Well, in the meantime, Maggie can come back to my apartment while you make all the arrangements. There's plenty of room for her and the baby."

"Well the doctors will take some time to arrange, I admit. But the apartment's already taken care of. Fully furnished. It's a penthouse on the Upper West Side. I think you'll like it. I can have someone swing by Peter's apartment and pick up your things."

To my left, Peter was staring at his brother as if he'd just stolen his favorite toy. It made me glad that I was an only child. Looking down at Derek, I silently promised him that I wouldn't have any more children until there was a big enough age difference that they wouldn't be so competitive.

***

The apartment Nathan bought me was amazing. It was a penthouse, as he'd told me. You needed a special key to even make the elevator go up to it, and once the elevator doors opened, there was only a single door to walk through. It lead to my beautiful Pre-War, four bedroom Mega-partment.

There were stairs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that apartments don't have stairs. Houses do, but apartments in my experience are generally one-level. The one I'd lived in pre-kidnapping had been Railroad-style. The door opened into the kitchen, and if you had to use the bathroom you had to walk through my bedroom. It made having houseguests awkward. But my new home had a staircase that led only to the Master Bedroom. The rest of the rooms were on the first level. And it had a terrace that overlooked Central Park.

The moment I walked in, I knew that I could wait tables for the rest of my life, and I'd never be able to pay Nathan Petrelli back for this. I settled for getting out of his hair as soon as possible, and I vowed that I would find a job and start saving as soon as I could.

The nursemaid wouldn't arrive for another few days, so for the moment it was just me and the baby. The kitchen was fully stocked, as was the nursery. There was an expensive crib, an endless supply of diapers, and beautiful toys that I almost didn't want to ruin by giving them to a baby who would inevitably spit up on them at some point. Peter came with me the first time I'd set foot in the apartment, but he eventually left. Derek fell asleep, and I was alone.

I had over a hundred channels of HD, not to mention almost all the premiums, but the TV gave me a headache. I was so used to living without it. I tried having a cup of tea out on the terrace, but the noise of the city bothered me after a while. I checked on Derek a few times, considered waking him up just so that I could talk to him, but he looked too angelic for me to disturb him. Months of living like a hermit, followed by the anonymity of the shelters, and a week on Peter Petrelli's couch had me itching for company.

I walked up the staircase and into the bedroom before I finally realized what was wrong with me.

The sheets weren't silk; they were Egyptian cotton. The thread count was some ridiculously high number. And the clothing in the closet included several pairs of pants, sweaters and T-shirts, not just flowery dresses. But I couldn't deny how much the situation reminded me of Gabriel. Once again, here I was in a home provided for me, decorated in a way that some man I'd never met thought would be pleasing to me. Clothing that he guessed would fit me hung up in my closet. My groceries were all bought, even my baby would be tended to. The bills were all paid for. If a drain clogged, a plumber would no doubt appear within minutes. Everything was taken care of, and absolutely nothing was truly mine.

I did not exist.

I hadn't decided that I wanted white lace curtains to adorn the French doors of my terrace. I hadn't picked blue as the color of my shower curtain and bath mats. I didn't paint the mural on my baby's nursery wall. The giant Chinese fan that adorned the wall above my bed was beautiful, but it wasn't my taste at all. I would have preferred a framed movie poster. Maybe "300" or "Snakes on a Plane."

The more I looked at everything around me, the more it seemed all wrong. It had been so long since I'd lived in my own home that I'd almost forgotten what my taste really was, but I knew that I didn't own fine china and serving platters. I used to have those little word magnets, and my friends and I would arrange them into dirty sentences during parties. And I used to stick magazine pictures on the wall. Articles I thought were funny or celebrities I thought were cute. My closet door had been a shrine to Johnny Depp.

This apartment was like a hotel. It was full of things that I should want. Things that were so beautiful that only a crazy person would refuse them. There was nothing wrong with the beautiful white couch and matching armchair, but the longer I stood in the living room, the more I hated them. I tried moving the chair. Who decided it should face the TV anyway? Maybe I would prefer it facing the windows.

But as I tried to push the couch away from the wall, I cried out in pain. I had just given birth, after all. I was not in peak physical condition. Moving the chair had already taken a lot out of me and I was already sweating. I settled instead for crumpling onto the cushions that I'd thrown on the floor and breathing hard for a moment.

For the past year and a half, I'd never had anything but what someone else had given me. Sylar or Nathan. Same difference.

I retreated to the nursery to remind myself of the one thing in this apartment that I had made, that I had chosen. That I had control over. He was all mine. Though Sylar was his father, Derek didn't belong to him. He'd waived that right in letting us go. Derek didn't have a father. I was all he had. And vice versa.


	5. Visions of Dead Men

The Picture on the Box

Five: Visions of Dead Men

It was about three weeks into this living arrangement when I began to become frightened of Nathan.

My days had become routine. The baby nurse had arrived, but I wasn't quite ready to leave Derek yet, especially in the hands of a perfect stranger, so I had delayed my search for a new job until I determined that my new nanny wasn't a total psychopath. I guess spending half a year locked in a basement had left me with some trust issues.

Claire had started college, but she still called me to check up, and promised to stop by the next time she was in New York. Her father (not Nathan, her other father) was blissfully absent from my life, and I only saw Angela when it was absolutely unavoidable. Peter remained my rock, coming by or calling at least once a day. Most days of the week he ate dinner with me. The woman Nathan had hired as my nanny was a gigantic German woman with shoulders like a linebacker named Ylva, and she was used to doing housekeeping and cooking as well. So most of the time, Peter provided the groceries and Ylva did the cooking. I felt a little guilty about it, until the day I tried cooking instead, and she threw me out of the kitchen halfway through prepping the chicken because I was "doing it wrong." Naturally afraid of being clothes-lined, I'd handed the bird over.

But Nathan remained more or less absent. He was like the landlord I didn't pay rent to. Well, kind of. A few days into my life in the new apartment I discovered that one of the bedroom windows didn't lock properly, letting in a draft. I remarked on it to Peter, and then next day Nathan showed up to inspect it. By noon the same day, men had arrived to have it fixed. No landlord I'd ever had had ever fixed anything with such speed.

In the back of my mind, I knew that Nathan had a key. This was, after all, his apartment. I was just squatting in it.

But then one night I woke up from a dream I couldn't clearly remember. My eyelids fluttered, and for a moment I thought that I was back in my basement with my Gabriel. I stretched my hand out across the bed to see if I could feel him, but the mattress was cold. The sheets weren't silky, like they were supposed to be. I woke up fully, and recognized the room around me.

I felt one abrupt, cold stab of disappointment, and then I settled down to go back to sleep. But my eyes wouldn't close. I kept staring at the wall across from me, feeling inexplicably that something was different. Not wrong. It wasn't a bad feeling. I wasn't afraid that my baby was silently suffocating a floor below me, I just sensed a change.

I decided to get something to drink. I made my way down the stairs and noticed that the hallway light was on. Ylva was living in the guest bedroom across from the nursery. It was understood that she would stay in that room until Derek was old enough to sleep through the night. I thought maybe he'd woken up and she'd gone to tend to him. Maybe that was why I'd woken up as well.

The nursery door was ajar, but Ylva's room was shut up tight. I thought that was a little odd, and always the paranoid mother, I crept over to look in on my baby.

For a moment, I was sure that I was still dreaming. I couldn't make out the face of the figure that was standing over my baby's crib, but the wide stance, the hunching of his shoulders, and the way his head was cocked slightly to the side were familiar enough that, had I breath, I would have screamed.

My body froze in the doorway. A dead man was standing over my baby's crib.

Mixed emotions flooded through me. All at once I was happier than I ever thought I could be. They'd told me he was dead, and yet there he was, standing close enough that I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to. And I wanted to, very much. But I was afraid that if I reached out to him, he would slip through my fingers like wisps of smoke and disappear.

And then the fear began to settle in. If he was alive, that meant my baby was in danger. He'd let us go because he wanted us dead. I was sure of that. If he'd found his way back to us, he must have changed his mind about setting us free. And when he found me here, with the people that had tried to kill him, what would he do to me? What would he do to Derek?

And then I must have made some movement or sound, because the man standing in my baby's room turned to me, and I saw his face in the light that spilled in from the hallway.

But it wasn't Gabriel. It was Nathan.

All at once I felt so stupid. Gabriel was dead. Seeing Nathan standing there when I was so sure that Gabriel's death must have been a lie was like hearing the news all over again. I could hear Peter's voice as clearly as if he'd been standing behind me in the hallway.

"Sylar's dead," he had said to me.

And so was my Gabriel.

I looked up to say something to Nathan, to ask him what he was doing here in the middle of the night, staring at my baby while he slept. But before my lips could even form the shape of the words, he had swept past me and left the apartment.

I did not go back to my bed. I spent that night curled up in the chair next to Derek's crib.

***

At my insistence, and a well-timed phone call from Peter, Nathan had agreed to give Ylva weekends off, but keep her "on call." So Saturdays and Sundays were my days to be alone with my baby. I took full advantage of these days.

I bundled him up in his cute little baby-sized mittens and booties, and took him out into the city. We went everywhere I'd gone when I first moved here: Central Park, the Museum of Natural History, Times Square. Even though he was only a month old and probably couldn't even distinguish anything but blurry shapes, I took him everywhere, talking to him the whole time.

The day after Nathan's moonlight visit to Derek's crib was a Saturday, and it was quite the cold one, so I decided to forgo our outing for the day and instead made hot chocolate and ordered "Kung Fu Panda" on the digital cable. I knew Derek wouldn't get much out of it, but I'd been dying to see it. Hilarious.

At five o'clock, Peter arrived. His arms were laden with a pizza and a plastic bag full of soda cans. He paused only to give me a friendly peck on the cheek and set down the pizza before walking straight into the living room, glancing down into Derek's playpen.

"Hey little guy," he greeted him warmly, picking him up and carrying him around the room. "I've got a surprise for you!"

He carried him to the window and stood right up to the glass, moving away the white lace curtains that I kept drawn all the time. He'd often read me the riot act about never opening them. The delicate white lace didn't keep the light out, but the big windows were frightening to me. I could never just focus on the fact that I could see out. To me, they always meant that someone could see in. It was another side-effect from my life in captivity.

So because the curtains had been drawn, and I'd spent the entire day inside, I hadn't noticed that it was snowing.

It was the first snow of the year, and I realized as I watched Derek place his hand on the glass, the first snow of my son's life. I walked up to Peter and looked out of the window with equal wonder. It had been a long time since I'd seen the snow as well.

"Yep, it's been snowing for the past two hours," he said to Derek, pretending playfully that I wasn't there, as he usually did. "I figured your mom wouldn't even know. You could have missed your first snowfall! But don't worry, I'm looking out for you."

I smiled. Over the weeks that I'd been living here, I'd been missing Gabriel less and less. I wouldn't say that I was over it completely, but I was starting to be okay. With a tiny baby occupying most of my attention, and baby nurses, doctors and even a maid coming in and out all the time, there was hardly any opportunity for me to focus in on the pain I still felt at his absence. If I could distract myself from it, it faded into the background. It was like being at the dentist after your mouth goes numb but you can still feel the drill in your teeth.

The only time I felt truly free of the pain was when I was with Peter. If Peter was there, it wasn't just that I felt numb, it was as if the pain was gone completely. This, I told myself was what I had been reaching toward on those nights of forced domesticity with Gabriel. It was hardly a gourmet dinner; just pizza and soda, but there was a sense of calm here with Peter that I'd never felt before. There was no worry that he was about to overturn the table and slap me across the face.

Peter was safe.

I knew that I could talk to him about anything. And despite the ease I was feeling as we chatted about nothing, I still couldn't get his brother's odd behavior out of my head.

"Peter?" I asked as were cleaning up the paper plates and soda cans. "Has Nathan been feeling like himself lately? He hasn't been acting… odd, has he?"

There was something in Peter's expression that made me think the answer he was about to give me would not be entirely truthful. "Not as far as I know," he said. "But I haven't really talked to him lately."

I wasn't satisfied, so I pushed. At least I knew he wouldn't stab me with a kitchen knife if I said something he didn't want to hear.

"Has he said anything… How does he feel about Derek?"

I knew the question was an awkward one. There was no way for my to hide what I was really getting at. I was too out of practice at this sort of thing. But this was Peter, and so I decided to tell him what had happened the night before. He looked troubled after I'd explained, as if this wasn't the sort of thing his brother would do. I wasn't sure if that made me feel relieved or anxious.

I put on my best smile and continued cleaning up after our dinner. "Oh well," I said, "it's probably nothing."

"He probably just wanted to see the baby…" He trailed off, but I knew what was going unsaid. Nathan felt uncomfortable around me. He still thought, despite my many reassurances, that I blamed him the most for Sylar's death. The truth was that I didn't blame anyone except Sylar. It had taken them all a while to understand that I viewed Sylar's death as something other than a victory or a relief. It was hard for them to wrap their minds around the thought that someone out there might actually miss him. Once they did it made for some very awkward moments.

They all looked at me like I'd been brainwashed or something. Like, at any moment I was about to don a blue sweatsuit and spout off about the Mothership. It was just too hard for Nathan and Angela and even Claire to realize that I had real feelings for the man. Hell, sometimes it was even hard for me to think about it. It's like looking back on some night when you were really drunk, and you're like, "I made out with who, now?" It was easier for everyone, including me, to just pretend that Sylar put some kind of evil spell on me. But it's pretty hard to have a normal conversation when you leave so much stuff unsaid. Hence Nathan's effort to avoid me at any cost.

The water was boiling for my tea. I was grateful for it, as it gave me an opportunity to escape the silence that had cut into my normally easy conversation with Peter. I took the kettle off the fire and reached up to get a mug.

Suddenly I became aware that Peter had moved to stand behind me. He put a hand on my shoulder that I'm sure he meant to be comforting. The hand felt extremely warm, like one of those heated pads you put on your muscles when they were sore. It was something he'd done many times before, but it felt different this time. There was something magnetic about it, and I turned around.

He was standing very close to me, and after I turned, the hand on my shoulder was replaced by both of his hands on my upper arms, spreading that same kind of reassuring warmth throughout my entire upper body. I felt the change, and I kept my face turned away from him and my eyes on the floor.

I knew what was happening. He was going to kiss me. We were standing too close to one another, not talking, not making eye contact. We were trapped in that limbo of the moment before a first kiss. We were both unsure, frightened and unwilling to give any more than we were sure to get back. I knew that he would watch me closely for cues, concerned of scaring me, pushing me too far. He would treat me like a rape survivor, as if the thought of contact with a man would give me nightmares.

But I knew that there was no chance I would be able to lean in and close the distance between us, even if I did want to. How long had it been since I'd had a first kiss? My stomach was gurgling with a hundred different acids. There was the familiar butterfly feeling that hadn't changed since I was twelve years old and secretly holding hands with Billy Coleman during the morning assembly. But there was also the sick, churning feeling that I always got when I'd done something wrong and was anticipating punishment.

I knew that it wasn't real, and that I shouldn't feel guilty about kissing Peter—or almost kissing Peter. And so I managed, with great difficulty, to at least turn my face up to him.

He seemed to take this as a gesture of assent, and so he leaned forward. His lips were impossibly soft and gentle against mine. He kissed me tentatively, as if afraid that I would shatter to a million pieces at any moment. I tried to kiss him back, but truth be told, that was exactly how I felt.

He had taken his hands off my arms when he'd leaned in for the kiss, as if he thought that contact with both his lips and his hands might be too much for me. He was now keeping them stiffly at his sides, but I missed the reassuring presence of them. I wanted to show him that it was okay to touch me, but I was afraid.

I no longer had the irrational fear that Sylar would appear to rip me to shreds the moment our lips parted. I was no longer afraid of someone who was no longer there. But what I was afraid of was myself. I was afraid to put forth any initiative, to give Peter any sign that I might want anything more, because I wasn't sure I'd be able to back it up. I didn't know if I was ready.

All the same, I knew that this was something that I wanted. I knew that Peter's lips felt good. I knew that I'd liked the feeling of his hands softly holding my arms. But I also knew that to merely allow Peter to kiss me would not communicate to him that I was enjoying myself. He would expect me to let him kiss me because he thought I was conditioned to be submissive. Because even though Peter was the one person who understood me best out of all the new people I'd met in the last month, he too saw me in his mind as the brainwashed sex toy of a serial killer. Probably he thought he was just triggering a response that had been beaten into me.

I wanted to let Peter know that I still had a choice, and that I was perfectly capable of pushing him away if I didn't want this. I wanted to curl my hands into his hair. I wanted to be able to return his embrace without the crippling fear that was keeping me from lifting my arms.

And then I remembered something from years ago. Like all of my memories of life before Sylar, it was hazy and there were bits and pieces missing, like I was recalling a movie I'd seen during my childhood. It was from my Senior Trip in High School, when we'd gone to the local amusement park. They'd had a flying trapeze and actual circus performers, and at the end of the show anyone who wanted to could take a swing, thirty feet above the ground.

I'd decided to do it. It really wasn't that frightening, there was a huge net and the trapeze artists strapped you into a safety harness that would delay your descent to the point where you fell into the net in slow motion. But the real fear came when I saw the ladder that led to the platform. It was just a regular ladder, propped up against the landing with nothing on either side to keep you from pitching over. I thought maybe there would be a staircase like on some of the roller coasters, but this was just a regular ladder like my father used to clear the gutters on our house. Except this one was tall enough to clear our roof.

I was about to turn back, but I was stuck. This was something I really wanted to do. It would be a shame to come this close and be too afraid. And then I realized that climbing the ladder did not require my being unafraid. All I needed to do was move my arms and legs.

Kissing Peter was just like that. I didn't have to be unafraid. All I had to do was move my arms. The hardest part would be the climb. Once at the top, all I had to do was jump.

Slowly my hands came off the countertop I'd been clenching in my fists. I felt Peter tense, probably wondering if I was going to push him away. But one came to rest on his shoulder, and the other wrapped around the back of his neck. With equal hesitation I threaded the fingers of my hand through his hair. I felt his hands on the small of my back and between my shoulder blades and felt him gently draw me closer to him. It wasn't the same kind of hunger with which Sylar used to handle me. Like everything Peter ever did, it was phenomenally gentle, no more than I wanted, and exactly what I needed.

My mind was completely lucid. I didn't have the same kind of blurry clouding of my senses that I got when Sylar kissed me. But while exciting, that feeling had also been frightening. Sylar was like a drug that numbed my senses and made it hard for me to remember things the next day. Peter's kiss was nothing like that. I was 100% present in my own mind, and completely conscious of every detail. I would not be left with just a vague feeling when we finally broke, I would clearly remember the feel of his lips, the smell of his skin and the small noises he was making in the back of his throat.

There was a crash and we leapt apart, both looking to the source of the noise to see that Derek had knocked his bottle onto the floor. He looked like he did it on purpose, as if angry that we'd stopped paying attention to him. A little messed up if you ask me, since he was the one who introduced us in the first place.

But whether it had been his intention or not, he'd succeeded in reminding me that I had more important concerns than Peter Petrelli's lips.

Bemused, I picked up the plastic bottle while Peter wiped up the formula that had leaked all over my kitchen floor. By the time the kitchen had been restored to its normal order, I found a convenient excuse to avoid eye contact with Peter in putting fussy Derek to bed.

On a normal night I would return from the nursery to find Peter making himself comfortable on the sofa, flipping through the channels. But tonight I returned from Derek's room to total silence. Peter was still in the kitchen, zipping up his bag, patting the pockets of his jacket to make sure he had all his belongings.

"Heading out?" I asked, leaning against the doorframe, keeping a comfortable distance between us.

"Yeah," he nodded, but spared me a half-hearted explanation. I appreciated that, and I understood why he wasn't staying. Up until now he could have settled himself on my couch, as comfortable as if he'd been my boyfriend, without worrying that it would mean anything. I might have even allowed myself to lay my head on his shoulder while we giggled at whatever sitcom we'd settled on.

Since Claire had started school it had been just the two of us. There had been no one else to observe our behavior and suggest that any of our contact might be a sign that our feelings were more than platonic. We could walk that line and push our behavior to the limit of what was appropriate for Just Friends. We were safe as long as neither of us said the unsaid.

But now we had kissed. If he and I settled down for a cuddle now, our safety net would be gone. If I rested my head on his shoulder now, it would MEAN something. It was better that he leave now, before things got too complicated. I walked him to the door and stood by his side while we waited for the elevator. When it arrived I looked up into his eyes for the first time since we stood opposite each other in the kitchen.

"Bye," I said.

"Bye," he echoed, and then we both hung there for a while, uncertain again. I was wondering if he would kiss me goodnight, and knew he was wondering if he should.

The elevator doors began to close and he had to push the button again. Then he looked back down at me, the tension broken, the angst temporarily dispelled, and smiled. I smiled too, and he leaned in and gave me a kiss. If was halfway between a peck and the smoldering embrace we had shared minutes earlier, and he was still smiling when he got into the elevator.

The doors closed and I stood for a few minutes in a fog of giddiness that I hadn't felt in years. But then I began to realize how quiet it was in the hallway, with my baby in bed and no television to spill mindless noise over the threshold of the living room door. I remembered waking in the middle of the night to find Nathan in my baby's room, and I realized with a chill that Ylva would not be sleeping in the room across from the nursery tonight.

Suddenly, though it had opened the door for a thoroughly enjoyable PG-rated make-out session with Peter Petrelli, my decision to spend weekends alone with my baby was looking like the stupidest idea ever. If Nathan came back tonight, if his intentions weren't as innocent as Peter seemed to believe, then I would be the only thing that stood between him and my baby.

The kid might as well hang a white flag from the bars of his crib.


	6. Nightmares

**Author's Note:** Okay, I am so sorry this chapter took so long, but I had a MAJOR case of Writer's Block. "Heroes" came back and for some reason this completely messed me up. That being said, we shall regard this as an AU story from now on, since my take on the Heroes-verse is a bit different than the way they decided to take it. (Um…am I the only one who thought the conversation Noah and Angela had over fake Sylar's funeral pyre _clearly_ indicated that The Company was coming back? Really?)

But let me just say, it was all your reviews that kept me going. Thanks to everyone who's reading this. I hope I don't let you guys down!

**The Picture on the Box**

Six: Nightmares

I must have heard the door open, heard the elevator ding as it released him up onto my floor, because I jerked awake just before I heard his footsteps in the hallway. I was curled up in the big comfy armchair just behind the door to Derek's nursery, and I threw the blanket off my lap as the light turned on in the hall, spilling a tiny strip of light across the floor and onto the bars of my son's crib.

It was just like in a horror movie; the quiet creaking of the floorboards, soon followed by the slow opening of the door, and Nathan Petrelli stepped into Derek's room. It did not open wide enough to hit my chair, which usually sat across the room. I had moved it for the specific purpose of having the element of surprise.

When he saw that the crib was empty, I reached up and hit the light switch. He spun around in a very satisfying way that suggested the beejesus had been scared out of him, and I smiled.

"Hi."

He didn't say anything for a moment; he looked far too surprised to have been caught. For a moment it looked like he might run out, but after a second something in him seemed to deflate, and he resigned himself to the scolding he was about to get.

"Maggie," he said. He pulled himself up a little bit and raised his hand as if to adjust his tie, but he was wearing a gray thermal T-shirt, so no dice.

"I'm sorry to wake you. I was just in the neighborhood and I thought I'd stop by… and check on things." He glanced once more at the empty crib. Derek was safe asleep in my room.

"At two o'clock in the morning?" I asked.

His toothpaste commercial grin faded a little. "Well, I haven't been sleeping very well lately."

"So you decided to take a walk and come stare at my son? Creepy," I told him. "I'm his mother, and even I don't watch him while he's sleeping." I stood up. "I know that you pay for all this and I know that I totally owe you more than I could probably every repay. But if you think that means you can just walk in here uninvited and take these kind of liberties… well, if I'd known it was going to be like that, I never would have accepted this apartment."

He put up one of his hands, looking down at the floor, at least a little sheepish. "Maggie, I'm sorry. You're right; it's completely inappropriate of me to come into your home without your knowledge. It won't happen again."

The sentence practically echoed with insincerity. In fact, of all the things he'd said to me since I'd caught him in this room, there was only one thing that had been true. I walked over to the crib and looked down into it, and even though I knew that Derek was safe upstairs in my bedroom, the sight of his cold and empty blankets gave me a chill.

"You haven't been sleeping," I said, repeating the only truth he'd told me.

He put his head down, turning it slightly towards the door again. "I've been having dreams…" he admitted. "Sometimes I wake up and I don't know where I am."

He sat down in the armchair and looked up at me. "I'm sorry. I know that it's wrong to come here in the middle of the night like that but… looking at him…seeing him calms me down."

I could understand that. I was lying when I said I didn't watch my baby while he slept. But I was his mother; I was allowed to do creepy stuff like that. I was entitled to watch him sleep, smell his head, take pictures of him naked, and bite him on the butt, just like my mother did to me when I was a baby. And there was only a small window of time before he got too old for me to do any of those things to him without finding myself in court soon after.

"What's wrong?" I asked him. "Pressures of being a New York State Senator getting to you?"

He got this very strange look on his face, like he was trying to work it out for himself. "It's not that, it's everything. I have these strange dreams, like my mind is trying to make me remember something that I've forgotten. And sometimes I wake up and I look around and it's like I'm waking up in somebody else's bedroom. Like the life I have isn't really mine."

"So you come here to look at my son?"

"I don't know why, but seeing him sleeping makes me feel better. He looks so calm. Neither of my boys ever slept through the night the way he does. At least, I don't think they ever did. I don't really remember. But after I've seen him, I can go home and I can get to sleep again."

I leaned over the empty crib and pictured my tiny baby asleep inside it. "It's because he's untouched," I offered, and Nathan looked up at me again. "He's this completely pure human being, he hasn't had the chance to become corrupted by anything. It's kind of wild. We're all scrambling to deal with all the horrible stuff we've experienced in our lives and he hasn't had the chance to see what a terrible place the world really is. To him, everything is still wonderful."

Nathan stood up, and I could see in his eyes that he agreed with everything I was saying. "Exactly. It makes me think that if that kind of purity can exist in the world, that maybe it's not too late for the rest of us. I see the kind of peace he experiences asleep in his crib and I think maybe I can find that kind of peace. Maybe some of it can be mine."

He was staring down at the blankets and his eyes seemed almost glassy. Suddenly he looked like his mind was far away, and I got another chill.

"Derek's not yours," I said quietly, not sure what prompted me to make the declaration. But the moment I said it I saw his shoulders tense, as if he'd been caught doing something he wasn't supposed to, and I knew that it was justified. "Derek is mine."

He turned around and looked down at me, and I gasped. It was just like the first time I'd caught him looking at my sleeping son. Nathan's face was staring back at me, but for some inexplicable reason, I saw Gabriel standing in his place. Maybe it was the expression on his face, or the way he was holding his shoulders, or just that I was feeling particularly guilty for kissing Peter earlier that night. But I saw him in Nathan, and the electricity that passed through the air between us was impossible to deny.

He took one step towards me.

I took one step back.

He took another step, and my back hit the door. And then we were kissing. And the crazy part about that? I kissed him.

It wasn't like my kiss with Peter. Peter's lips had felt different, foreign. His kiss had been almost the exact opposite of Sylar's. There could be no similarities drawn between Peter and the man I'd been kissing for the past year. But kissing Nathan was just like being back in that basement again. There was the same ferocity in the way his lips moved against mine. After a moment his hands came up and gripped my waist and the space between my shoulder blades just like Sylar used to. Like I was about to slip away at any moment. I felt as though I was being driven backwards by the sheer force with which he was pressing himself to me.

His lips moved to my neck and I whimpered. My eyes fluttered open and for a fraction of a second my blurry vision cleared, and I saw not the metal walls of my home and prison, but the framed Christopher Robin oil painting that hung above my son's crib.

I came back to myself.

And with all the strength that I thought had drained out of my body, I pushed Nathan away. He stumbled backwards a few steps, and then he looked up at me. His face held none of the shock, none of the shame I expected to see. Instead he looked happy. Like he had just discovered something he'd been missing. It infuriated me.

I hit him.

He blinked when I slapped him, and he turned his face back to me slowly, as if begging me to hit him again. When I did, he took a step towards me. I felt a little frightened, but there was excitement stirring in me also. It was way down in the pit of my stomach, moving tentatively as if afraid. It was something I hadn't felt in a very long time.

I drew my hand back to slap him again, but this time he caught my arm and held it. In another moment my other hand was in his, and he'd backed me up against the wall.

I didn't know what was happening. It all seemed to be going to fast, and the tiny tickle of excitement had turned into a raging fire that seemed to spread all the way up to my eyeballs, rendering me incapable of seeing anything but Nathan's eyes.

And even though they were in a completely different face, in that moment I could have sworn they were Gabriel's eyes.

My wrists were in his grip, but my hands still had some range of motion, and I took advantage of that fact to claw at his shirt, pulling at it until he finally released me and I was able to rip it up over his head. He grabbed my waist again and I jumped, wrapping my legs around his waist and he hoisted me up. He carried me back to the armchair in which I'd ambushed him, pulling my robe off as he went.

My nightgown was cotton and relatively modest, but it certainly didn't look demure bunched up well above my thighs. He kissed my breasts through the thin fabric, and as he moved his head lower, he glanced up at my face.

The moment the imposter's face looked up at me with Gabriel's eyes I turned my head away. I imagined a different set of hands hooking their fingers under my underwear and pulling them down my legs.

It was only when I felt the first touch of his tongue on me that I finally opened my eyes again. This couldn't be right. This had to be a dream. I was too overcome with my memories of Gabriel that I only imagined Nathan's technique to be exactly the same. But the motions, the pressure, even the tiny noises escaping his throat were Gabriel's.

When he added the fingers, I almost called his name. It was all I could do to bite down on the pillow as the waves of pleasure rolled through me. I looked down at the dark head of hair between my legs and saw my Gabriel.

And then Nathan lifted his head.

I felt sick to my stomach, but the desire in his eyes was triggering a response in me that soon overcame my guilt. Unable to look at Nathan's face, I turned. He responded in turn, and helped me adjust my position. I was on my hands and knees on the soft white carpet and I heard him behind me, undoing his belt buckle.

He slipped one hand under my breast and squeezed, using the other to guide himself into me. He pushed in only far enough for me to feel him, and then he grabbed both of my hips and drove himself in to the hilt.

I cried out as he drew himself out slowly, trying to prolong the sensation for as long as he could. His next few thrusts were slow and gentle. Facing away, I allowed myself to slip completely into fantasy, and pictured Gabriel's hands on my hips, and his fingers digging into my pelvis. I told myself that it was Gabriel's heavy breathing I felt on the back of my neck, and I arched my back, moving to meet his every thrust.

"God damn it," I breathed. "Harder…harder!"

Upon hearing my voice, one of his hands grabbed me by the hair, and he started slamming into me. I could hear the sound of our skins slapping against each other, but I was moaning too loud to register it.

"Oh God, Maggie," he growled in a voice so ragged I told myself it was Sylar's.

His thrusts began to grow frantic, his breathing turning to gasps, and I knew he was close. I got no verbal warning, but the hand that had been in my hair slipped down to my neck and around to the underside of my throat. He wrapped his fingers around it firmly, but without exerting any pressure.

I froze.

He shuddered and fell forward, the hand that had been around my throat coming away in order to brace him from falling on top of me. He stayed inside me for a few minutes as he breathed, and then he pulled himself way and rolled onto the carpet, his chest heaving.

I grabbed the blanket that lay across the armchair, and spread it across our nearly naked bodies. He lay on his back on the carpet, his eyes closed, and I looked down at his face. The sick feeling started to creep back into my stomach.

He stretched his arms out, and I lay down and let him wrap them around me.

I actually fell asleep.

***

I awoke because he was mumbling.

My ear hurt from falling asleep with my head on Nathan's outstretched arm. I was also shivering, as he'd taken most of the blanket in his sleep. He appeared to be having a nightmare, mumbling and moving as if he was chasing something.

I sat up, debating if I should get up and go to sleep in my own bed. If Nathan awoke to find me gone and was so overcome with embarrassment that he left quietly and never came over here again…well, I had no problem with that.

"Sylar."

My blood went completely cold. Most of Nathan's mumbling had been impossible to understand, but this word had been loud and clear. I had once slept next to a man who mumbled the same word in his sleep.

I looked down at Nathan's troubled face.

And I was in bed with Sylar.

I screamed, and I jumped up onto my feet. When he heard my shriek, Sylar's eyes went wide and he jerked awake, staring up at me in fear.

"What is it?" Sylar's voice asked. "What's happened?"

He blinked the last bit of grogginess out of his eyes, and his skin began to move. It looked like boiling water, bubbling and shifting. And suddenly his chest was covered in thinner, finer hair. His eyebrows changed shape. His body became less lean, his chin more pronounced.

The change was unnoticed by him, but slow enough that I knew I hadn't imagined it.

He was still looking at me with the question in my eyes. Quickly, I regained my composure.

"I had a nightmare," I told him.

A moment of silence passed, and he seemed to come out of whatever fever had thrown him into my arms in the first place. He looked down at himself, realized he was naked, and a blush crept into his cheeks.

"I should go," he said.

I nodded. The sky outside was starting to get light, and as if on cue, I heard Derek crying from upstairs in my room. I moved to the door to attend to my child, glancing back at Nathan, who was gathering up his clothes.

"You'll let yourself out?"

He nodded, and I flew up the steps into my room. I swept Derek up into my arms and held him while he cried, feeling like I might give him a run for his money at any moment. I stayed like that well after Derek fell asleep again, after I'd heard the door to my apartment open and close again, and after the sun had come up fully and noises of people filled the streets below us.

I tried to wrap my mind around what I just saw, taking stock of the little I knew as opposed to the whole mess of stuff I had no idea about.

Peter had told me something of how they'd stopped Sylar. In his storytelling, the subject of Sylar's newly acquired shape-shifting ability had been mentioned. But if Sylar was posing as Nathan, why hadn't he revealed himself yet? Why hadn't he let me know he was still alive? Why hadn't he tried to kill me? Or Derek?

I had so many questions and I was absolutely, one hundred percent shit-scared to ask Peter. So I did the only thing I could think of:

I dialed Claire's number.


	7. To Find the Truth

**The Picture on the Box**

**Seven: To Find the Truth**

This coffee was not doing it for me. But it was relatively early in the afternoon, only about 2:00 or so. Ylva was with Derek, who would probably be going down for his afternoon nap right about now. It was a Sunday, and Claire's bus had just gotten in to the Port Authority.

How sad would I be if I ordered a Jack and Coke at two o'clock on a Sunday afternoon?

Playing it safe, I ordered a White Zinfandel. Maybe if I faked some kind of an accent, the bartender would just assume I was European. Europeans could drink at any time of day without seeming like alcoholics.

The lunch crowd had already filed out of the classy Bistro, but there were still a few people hanging around. In any of the places I'd worked in my many years in food service, these people would be unemployed, most likely depressed and looking to spend some of their quickly diminishing cash on a drink of two. Here, at this disgustingly hip and trendy Union Square café, the people lounging at their tables were those who didn't _need _to work. Trust fund babies and trophy wives, some actually wearing sunglasses _inside_ the restaurant.

Claire had suggested this place. I think she Googled it.

"Isn't it a little early for wine?" a familiar voice chimed from behind me.

I turned and greeted Claire with a kiss on the cheek. "Well, I got up really early this morning."

"So," Claire asked once we'd gotten our table, browsing through the lunch menu. "What's this all about? You sounded a little freaked out on the phone."

I nodded. "Yeah, well…I was. It's really nothing to be worried about, I'm fine. The baby's fine. We're all fine."

"So, what's up?"

"I'm having some trouble adjusting, I think," I began, trying hard to push away my guilt at lying to Claire. But I couldn't tell her what had happened. Not yet. "I mean, it was one thing to live with Sylar and see his do the things he does…"

"Did," Claire corrected me.

Well Goddamn. I looked up at her, and her eyes were set firmly, the way they always appeared when she knew she was right about something. When there was no arguing with her.

"Right," I said, conceding the point. If I were lucky she would dismiss it as a sign that I still grieved for my kidnapper. "It's just… he was the only person I'd ever known with abilities. But now it's like every day I meet someone new who can do something else. I just feel like I don't know anything about the world I'm a part of now."

"So, what do you want to know?" she asked.

"Everything," I told her. "I have to know what kind of people you've met, what they could do. I mean, is there anything in your world that's impossible?"

The waiter chose that moment to come over to us if we were ready to order. Claire, who'd already closed her menu and folded her hands on top of it, ignored him for the moment, staring at me.

"Why me?" she asked.

I smiled up at our server, a little embarrassed at Claire's blatant disregard for his existence. But I got the feeling Claire wouldn't order until I answered her, so I leveled with her.

"Because you're the only one who won't lie to me."

Claire's eyes narrowed slightly before she tipped her chin up and glanced up at the server. "I'll start with a salad."

***

By the time our salad plates had been cleared away, Claire had given me a Cliffnotes version of all the "specials" she'd encountered. The most disturbing was probably a man who made nuclear explosions. Well…just the one time.

"What happened to him?"

"Sylar killed him," she said bluntly. That was what I liked most about Claire; she never tiptoed around painful subjects or acted like I was apt to dissolve into a puddle of tears at any moment.

My soup arrived, and we'd finally retuned to he subject I really cared about.

"He killed so many people," I said, shaking my head. I tried hard to make my voice sound the way people do when talking about the death of someone they barely know. The "oh, what a shame" voice. "I wonder how many powers he'd taken by the end."

"I don't know," she said, twirling her pasta onto her fork.

"Well, we know about the telekinesis, the healing… the shape-shifting…" I took a sip of my soup.

"He had this other one…it was how he was able to impersonate Nathan for so long. Anything he touched, he knew the history of it. So he could tell you details about things that he couldn't have hoped to know otherwise."

Now this was something interesting. "So, all Sylar would need is something of Nathan's, like maybe something from his childhood, and he would have Nathan's memories?"

Claire nodded solemnly. "That's how he fooled me. He touched a necklace I'd been wearing with Nathan in Mexico, and so he knew about everything we'd done there."

"God, how do you even fight against something like that?"

"There are ways. My dad's old partner René can stop people from using their powers. When he'd in a room with you, you're just a normal person. He could also go inside people's heads and erase their memories."

Well it made perfect sense that Bennett's Company would want someone like that on their team. People were bound to see suspicious things when dealing with Specials. It was probably pretty convenient to have somebody who could Men in Black all the innocent bystanders. He probably even rewrote their memories, to make them think…

Wait a second…

"He could erase people's memories?" I asked. "Could he also… plant false memories in someone's head? Make them believe something that's not true?"

Claire made a face. "No. I've had it done to me and… there's just an empty space where the memories used to be."

Well, there goes that idea. Even if Sylar's memories had been erased, it would take a lot more than the stories of all Nathan's possessions to convince him that he _was _Nathan. He would have all the information, sure. But he wouldn't believe. Sylar's powers—and more importantly, his homicidal urges—would just manifest in Nathan. And since the distinguished senator wasn't going around killing people, Sylar must not be aware of what had happened to him.

"I do know somebody who can do that sort of thing though," Claire added.

"What's his name?"

***

After all that had happened to me in the past few days, the last place I wanted to be was Nathan Petrelli's office. But here I was, trembling next to his receptionist's desk, my sweaty hand wrapped around the knife in my pocket. I'd almost had a heart attack when I saw the armed security guard at the entrance. But I hadn't been searched and there was no metal detector. All he did was have me stand in front of a camera and ask me what floor I was going to.

"You can go right in," said the secretary, hanging up the phone. She gave me a sidelong glance as I walked past her desk and through the massive double doors of Nathan's office. I wonder who he told her I was, if he bothered making up a cover story at all.

When I walked in, Nathan looked so completely at ease that he must have been horribly uncomfortable. He leaned back in his chair and smiled.

"Maggie," he greeted me warmly. "Please, have a seat." He gestured to the smaller, less throne-like chair on the other side of his desk, which I took. "Can I get you anything? Water, coffee, tea?"

"No," I said. "That's okay, I'm not thirsty."

He got up and perched on the front of his desk, a nice attempt at casual. Now that I had good reason to be more aware of it, I was beginning to notice that "Nathan" barely did anything that was genuine. I used to think it was because he was uncomfortable being around me. That awkwardness could account for his every word, gesture and posture being a lie. But now I was starting to see that it might not be something he could control.

"Well," I started, "it's kind of awkward."

"If this is about last night…"

"No. No, no. No." There was no way we were going to talk about that. Ever. "No. I need a favor."

He seemed to relax just slightly. His false smile warmed a little bit and a wrinkle appeared at the corner of his right eye. "Of course," he said, as if he hadn't already given me everything I could ever ask for. "Anything you want."

"I need some money."

The wrinkle at his eye disappeared, but his lips stayed curled up in a smile. "How much do you need?"

I tried to remember how much Travelocity had told me it would cost for a round-trip ticket to California, plus a rental car. "Eight hundred," I said, rounding up.

Nathan sighed and looked down. He seemed relieved. "Of course," he said, and he got up to write me the check. No arguments, no questions. He just signed his name and tore it out of the checkbook. It was when I caught a look at his face as he handed it to me that I realized why he looked so relieved. The amount of money I'd asked for had been far less that he'd anticipated.

"Did you think I was going to blackmail you?"

I took the check from him and the wrinkle returned. "Maybe."

I needed both hands to fold my brand new eight hundred dollars, and so I let go of the knife I'd been clutching in my pocket this whole entire time, thankful that I hadn't had to use it.

"Can I ask you what you need it for?"

I smiled. "I'm investing in Derek's future."

The mention of my son's name wiped any trace of a smile, genuine or otherwise, off his face. I nodded my thanks, and got up to leave his office.

Once out on the street I walked straight to the bank, and then called Ylva. I needed to make sure she was available to stay with Derek full-time for the next few days.

I had to go find Matt Parkman.


	8. The Visit

The Picture on the Box

Eight: The Visit

Did Matt Parkman work to earn the big, beautiful house that I was parked in front of, or did he simply brainwash the rightful owners into handing over the deed? Through the glass patio doors I could see a slim, beautiful woman with short brown hair sipping a cup of coffee. Was she nothing more than a slave?

I pulled the keys from the ignition and tucked them into my black leather purse. I matched my black leather jacket, which went very nicely with the black halter and jeans I'd bought for the occasion. The tickets and rental car had only cost six hundred, and I'd needed to look scary.

The final touch was a pair of mirrored sunglasses. I checked my slicked-back hair and my dark red lipstick in the rear-view mirror. Fully satisfied that I looked like a background performer from the Matrix movies, I got out of the car.

His wife answered the door. She saw me and immediately looked concerned, which was one point in the "Not a Brainwashed Sex Slave" column, but I don't know how it works, so I wasn't about to give her the benefit of the doubt just yet.

"I'm looking for Matt Parkman."

She called to him, and a figure emerged in the doorway to the kitchen. To say that I'd pictured Matt Parkman differently would be an understatement. I'd been picturing Jason Bourne. Instead out walked this sweet looking, chubby guy with a toddler on his arm. He had an apron tied around his waist and was waving a rattle in front of the little boy's face.

When he saw me his entire demeanor changed. He handed the baby to his wife and said, "Janice, take Matty inside."

Janice started to protest, but the moment the baby was in her arms she glanced back at me once more and disappeared into the house. When she and the baby were out of the room he turned to face me, bracing himself like he was about to be attacked.

I felt like a huge shmuck.

"I'm Matt Parkman," he said. "Who are you?"

"Um…hi." There was nothing much I could do about my Dark Angel outfit, but I at least removed the sunglasses, pushing them up onto my forehead. "My name is Maggie. I'm sorry to burst in on you unannounced." A little courtesy never hurt. "I need your help. May I come in?"

***

Twenty minutes later we were sitting on the couch with giant mugs of coffee in our hands. Janice, after much apologizing and convincing that I wasn't a danger to her husband and son, had left for work. Matt Jr. was playing on the carpet.

"How old is he?" I asked.

"Almost two."

"He's beautiful."

"Thank you." And cue the awkward silence while we both sipped our coffee. "You said you needed my help."

I nodded. "I've heard about your ability, that you can get inside someone's mind and make them see what you want them to see. I need to know more about what you can do."

"I don't know what you're—"

"Mr. Parkman," I told him calmly, "there's no point in lying to me. I'll know."

Well, it was true. Even if I made it sound like my ability to detect lies was a supernatural ability rather than a side effect from being lied to for most of my life. It was just easier that way. If he believed that he couldn't lie to me, he wouldn't even try.

"Do you think it's possible to rewrite someone's personality?" I asked him. "Do you think you could completely erase somebody's mind, and replace it with someone else?"

He cocked his head to the side. "Why are you asking me thing?" He was clearly suspicious, but at least he wasn't lying to me. He was just trying to avoid the question.

"I think somebody who can do what you do has hurt someone I love," I explained, neatly sidestepping and actual information. "I need to know if I can help him get better. If I can bring him back."

Matt stood up and paced a little bit before looking back down at me. I knew he was drawing parallels. But I looked up at him as earnestly as I could, trying to let all my concern and love for Gabriel show through me eyes.

"Please, Matt," I pleaded with him.

Matt Parkman was one of the White Hats. The Sylar he knew had none of the depth, none of the different layers of the man I knew. To him Sylar was nothing but a killer; a black moustache-twirling bad guy. The possibility of someone caring enough for Sylar to want to save his life would not even occur to him. To him, I would have to be talking about someone else.

He knew that what he'd done to my Gabriel was wrong. Nathan must be dead, and he'd fooled all of Nathan's friends and family into thinking the man was still alive. I was making him remember what he'd done and I could see the guilt in his face. But he couldn't believe someone would care for Sylar the way I did. To him, I was presenting him with the chance to improve his karma. To help "my friend" would enable him to atone for his crime.

He didn't realize I was offering him the chance to undo what he did.

"If you want my honest opinion," he said finally, "I don't think it's possible to really erase someone's personality. I mean I don't know how this person's ability relates to mine, but I can't take away anything that's already there. I can only add my influence. The impulses and thoughts that make you who you are… I can tell you to ignore them, but I can't make them go away."

"So, he's still in there," I breathed.

"Somewhere, yes. If it's anything like what I—what I can do, then he's just buried. But not gone."

"So, do you think I can get him out?" I asked, hopeful. This was the big question, the reason I came here. And to my dismay, Matt Parkman began to shake his head.

"I don't know," he said. "The person who did it would definitely be able to go in and reverse what he'd done. Maybe I could do something if my ability is similar—"

"No," I said quickly. Though he may be my only shot, if he knew I was talking about Sylar he would never agree. And there was no way of knowing if it was just Parkman involved. Would he look so full of remorse is if had been entirely his idea? Would he be so eager to help me if he felt himself completely justified in what he'd done?

This wasn't just Matt Parkman. This was some kind of conspiracy or something.

"No, Mr. Parkman. You've done more than enough already." I got up to leave, handing him back his mug. "Thank you for the coffee. Your information has been invaluable."

He didn't stop me, though he looked like he wanted to say more. "Good luck," he told me. "If you need anything else, please don't hesitate to call me."

I nodded my thanks, and I got back into the car as quickly as I could. I drove down to the next block and then I pulled over. The tears in my eyes were making it too difficult to keep my eyes on the road.

Sylar was not dead. The man who'd died instead was Nathan Petrelli; a strange, unfamiliar state senator whom I had never met. I knew that I shouldn't mourn a man I didn't know, but a portion of my tears were for him. The last on a list of dozens that had been killed by Sylar.

This man's death had taken my Gabriel away from me. It had been stretched over time as if the senator had been suffering from a degenerative disease. But when the mask of Nathan Petrelli was finally ripped away, it would not be the anticipated end to a long battle. It would be as sudden as if he was hit by a car while crossing the street. The pain they would all feel had not been avoided, only delayed.

But what else could I do? My Gabriel was still there, hidden behind a man who wasn't meant to have survived. If I could find some way to find him, reach him or save him, I could no longer look into Nathan Petrelli's eyes and not hear my Gabriel scream.

Who else could be in on it? Not Claire. She hated Sylar more than anyone else in the world still living. And Peter… he was too good to a part of something like this. I knew exactly who was involved in this plot. The moment I'd shown up—Sylar's impregnated lover—there had been two people adamant about keeping Nathan from me.

Noah Bennett and Angela Petrelli.

They had to have been responsible for this. And as sheer bad luck would have it, they were the parents of the two people I trusted most. If I tried to bring Claire or Peter into this, there would be tears. There would be yelling. There may be violence.

Whatever I did now, I would have to do alone.


	9. All the Pieces Fit

The Picture on the Box

Nine: All the Pieces Fit

People always talk to loved ones who are in comas. As if their father, mother, lover or whoever can still hear them. As if they are awake and aware, and have just lost the ability to open their eyes, to move their limbs.

A coma is a gift that nature gives us, so that when the damage to our moral bodies results in a slow, lingering and painful death, to us it's nothing more than just falling asleep. When you are so badly damaged that darkness overtakes you, you can't hear, and you can't feel. You are gone. But when the people who you've left behind are too selfish to let you go, when they hook you to machines to force your lungs to keep breathing, when they feed you through tubes, and leave you lying for hours on end, floating in the abyss, aware of nothing but the nothingness—it's worse than death.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I could still hear. If it would be better than this.

I wonder where I am. Given my history, I think it's unlikely that I would be lying in a bed, hooked to a machine, surrounded by flowers and Get-Well Soon greeting cards. Who would be visiting me? Telling me about their day? Or maybe I have been buried in the ground, or closed up in a wall behind a pile of brick. I feel like I am still here, but I have been compressed into a corner, like I've been packed away in a garage somewhere.

But then sometimes I can see her face.

And then—I am gone.

There is that moment between asleep and awake when your nightmare ends, and you can feel yourself lying in the bed. But I do not know how to open my eyes. And I can't go back to sleep.

After all this time, I thought I'd end up in Hell. Strangely I never realized how much more terrifying limbo would be.

And then—I am back.

I clench my fist. And miraculously, I _hear_ something. Something crashes, something breaks, and then there are voices. One is a tiny, feminine gasp, and one is the roar of a man. It is my voice. It is not my voice.

I disappear again.

Why can I not just die? I gave up on waking up a long time ago. I do not even remember the last thing I remember. I have always been here.

"Sylar."

It is not my voice again. I hear it before I even remember what it is to hear again. I unfold myself from the corner I've been pushed into. I feel something—it takes me a moment to realize that I am feeling something. It is heat on my skin. But it feels wrong somehow. Not like the heat is wrong, more like the skin is wrong.

And I see her face again.

Then the feeling fades, and her face turns black and goes away, but I don't want it to. I am feeling, I am hearing, and no I am remembering. I remember her. I reach out desperately toward that face, that feeling of heat against my skin, of sweat dripping down, and I discover why my arms will not obey the signals my brain is sending—I am not alone here.

He is here, too. He is not expecting me to fight. He is strong, but he is not _supposed _to be here. And just as I could not get out myself, I cannot expel him either, so I stuff him down to where I was trapped. He fights, but as he fights, he dissolves and becomes a part of that which he always was.

Me.

The sensations come back in such a rush that I cannot process them all at once. The first is light, and the second is pain. My eyes—unused—burn. Then I begin to smell again. I think I smell metal, but I really smell blood. My chest is covered in it, as well as sweat, but all the wounds have closed. The smell tumbles me backwards into the familiar world of death and I remember who I am.

I am Sylar.

The ropes that tie me to this chair are easily broken, but my telekinesis leaves me dizzy, as if I had suddenly tried to run after years in a wheelchair. I catch myself on the wall, and I look around the room. It is destroyed, like a tornado has ripped through it. Everything that hadn't been tied down lies broken on the floor, next to whichever wall it had been hurled against. There is an overturned table to my left, with knives around it. Most have my blood on them. There is a broken bottle of red wine, two crushed glasses, and I can smell traces of a drug.

I can hear her heartbeat. She is in the room. The heavy oak desk is the only think undisturbed in the room. She is crouched underneath, shaking. As I come around to where she is hidden and reach down to grab her by the hair, my foot crunches down on the glass of a framed photograph. I remove my foot and I see the faces of Peter and Nathan Petrelli.

And I remember a memory that is not mine. And yet it happened to me.

This was Nathan Petrelli's house. This was Nathan Petrelli's study. She had been here when he'd come home from the office, with a bottle of wine and two glasses already poured. She'd told him that they had something to celebrate, and he'd taken a sip of the wine that she'd handed him.

It had been drugged, and he'd woken up tied to the very same chair I had woken up in. And she had tortured him. She had cut him and he had healed, and watched in disbelief as my captive mind sent his possessions hurtling toward her.

Her hands come up to grip the one I have tangled in her hair. I lift her up from the floor, and finally, I remember what has happened to me.


End file.
